16" M1Pro Macbook — Is it for UX UI Designers?
The User and Usage
As a UX / UI Designer transitioning to Product Design, I do not require the best CPU or Graphics Card on the market. Macbooks have been preferred by creative professionals who work on Photoshop, Illustrator, Blender, and Premier.
However, My typical workday starts with Chrome (checking mails, calendar for meetings) and Slack (mentions regarding tasks, updates from teammates). From there as soon as I start Figma it takes a while (on my iMac 27" i5 8GB) to open the large file(s) which usually are about 20 Pages each having about 50 or so Artboards containing Thousands of Layers of vector objects and linked raster images. The last app I usually open is Spotify to disconnect myself from the noises around me and focus on work.
The Potential Solution
So after a year of using these aforementioned apps on iMac (5K) on a daily basis, I knew I need more RAM than 8GB and could use a more powerful CPU that speeds things up while I am on Figma dealing with so many layers.
Enter M1 Air / Pro, from the reviews it felt like this is IT. Everything I need in a single chip: It doesn’t require a lot of charging time, has a good display, is portable, and is surprisingly affordable.
But being a designer I have always preferred having a large display, starting with 15" Dell to 25" Ultrawide LG to 27" iMac 2020 it has been a great help having more pixels from 1080p to 2k to 5k.
After visiting my local apple store multiple times and holding the M1 Air/Pro in my hand I decided to wait because a 2k resolution on a 13.3" display didn’t work for me.
The Promising Solution
On the night of 18th of October, after waiting a year and just finished watching the event with “ridiculous” claims for a laptop Ever, in terms of Power and Battery Time. I almost clicked on that buy now button before I stopped myself to wait for MKBHD and other tech reviewers to give their opinions. So after a month and a half of positive reviews on the 3rd of Dec 2021, I went for it.
M1-Pro 16": 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
The Promises vs The reality
So the First Week was all about Testing, The most important part for me was Battery Time on Casual and Workday. Can it handle all that Figma + Chrome + Slack + Notion over wifi all day without needing to Charge?
So, for me, it has been approximately 7 to 8 hours of usage in one charge. As I said before my typical day in Figma I am working with Thousands of Layers of vector and raster objects. A couple of Video meetings over Zoom, Slack, and Chrome all day.
BTW, it doesn’t matter if you Turn off ProMotion (that is apple’s renaming of 120Hertz refresh rate for the screen) it still gives you the same Battery Time.
The Comparision
The next thing that I care about is how fast it is compared to my iMac 27" 2021 with Intel i5 6-core CPU. The first test is about how fast it is to boot the system.
So as expected the M1Pro with 10-core CPU boots faster than Intel 10th Gen i5 iMac. Those couple of seconds doesn’t really matter to me personally but to many, it's a scale of how fast these M1s are compared to Intel Macs.
This second test was more important to me than Boot Time. I wanted to know how long would it take for M1Pro to load the Figma and then the Gigantic file of a Design System I am working on these days compared to iMac.
Here again, M1-Pro is quite fast than iMac 27".
The Takeaway
Now, this last test and that ~15-second matter to me as a UX UI Designer, when the day passes I can see iMac running slower and slower while M1-Pro does not slow at all. It doesn’t even heat up. It doesn’t even kick the fan.
But it does eat a lot of RAM and CPU+GPU that comes with the cost of Battery Time. So if you are planning to buy one of these for UX UI Design work over Figma all day with a couple of apps like chrome and zoom, You will need to charge it once a day.
After 2 weeks of usage, I now simply hook it whenever I am near a power outlet. As I am one of those Users who uses 80% to 100% brightness most of the time.
PS: the only time it heated and fans kicks in was when I installed Windows 11 on Parallels and tested a game over it.
